When it comes to sequels, there are an infinite number of ways to live up to the law of diminishing returns, but there may be only one unbreakable rule that every sequel can stick by: don't do the same things over again. Sure, you want to deliver a similar experience to the original, because people tend to want to see the same characters, the same world, or a related premise, but once you've got that out of the way, be sure to come up with some wild, fresh ideas to keep the audience guessing. Even a film like Evil Dead II, widely referred to by fans as a remake of The Evil Dead, covers mostly new ground: Ash goes insane, fights his own hand, becomes possessed, and eventually travels through time. I bring this up because Evil Dead II is a film that comes to mind when watching Demons 2...and not in a good way.

There are countless reasons for film fans to watch older movies, but chief among them is to see what's changed about the approach to films over time. Each generation of film has its own trends and tropes, and watching a movie made decades ago often helps clarify what it is that's gotten better or worse as the times have changed. Although it's kind of embarrassing to think of Demons as an "older" movie (I implore anyone who likes film to watch more movies made before 1970), it's no exception. Modern screenwriters and directors are obsessed with "world-building", insistently giving every concept and character an elaborate backstory. It's a tiring trend, one that shaves away the concept of magic and fantasy, especially as it grows in scope. Demons, directed by Mario Bava's son Lamberto and produced by Dario Argento, is a wonderful example of how little of that information is necessary fo...Read the entire review

Sometimes a simple idea produced on a low budget can make a big impact. It doesn't always take Hollywood scale in order to create a movie people want to see, a story worth watching, or a script worth its weight. Worm is an example of bare-bones film-making that succeeds without many definable characteristics going for it. No big stars, no great effects, a simple set, a basic plot. But combine a good director with one strong actor in a film that's written & edited well and you don't really need much else. Perhaps the low budget of the movie will limit its accessibility, but the lucky few who stumble across it will get a show worth e...Read the entire review

Paul Lynch's Prom Night is just one of the many slashers released in the wake of Halloween. It pales in comparison, but does feature that film's star: Jamie Lee Curtis. What Prom Night lacks in tension and technique it partially makes up for in glittery, last-days-of-disco spirit. Why else would Curtis and co-star Casey Stevens have a minutes-long dance number in the middle of the film? The ...Read the entire review

It's hardly just another movie. Parts like the leading role of Audra come around once in a lifetime, and that's if you're lucky. Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) fought like hell to get her hands on the film rights to the legendary play, and she's willing to go to whatever extreme lengths are necessary to see it done justice. Taking The Method to a whole other level, Sherwood pretends to be consumed by homicidal rage and has herself committed. It's the only way for her to truly inhabit the psychotic character of Audra...to give her the insight into what it's like to spend however many years locked away in an asylum. When Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon) -- her wildly eccentric and more than a little Kubrickian director -- first comes to visit, Sherwood looks back at him with a mischievous glint in her eye....Read the entire review

It's only a few seconds into Countess Dracula until a lifeless corpse is first encountered. This being a Hammer Films production and all, that probably ought to go without saying, but Count N dasdy doesn't meet that kind

Zombies are popular subject matter for indie filmmakers. Why not, I guess. The horror genre as a whole is a medium that allows high entertainment for small amounts of money. Some fake blood, some screaming hotties, a shaky camera, boom. And zombies fit right into this formula; easy to produce, easy to enjoy. So I've seen a ton of low budget undead in my time as a film critic, some awful some pretty cool. But I've never seen a zombie/horror/post-apocalyptic movie quite like this one. Reel Zombies is in a category all its own; a mockumentary/comedy that uses the standard indie horror idea and adds a twist that sm...Read the entire review

"I've seen it all before. First of all, they start to argue with one another...y'know, a few 'piss off's and 'get stuffed's, and nobody really takes any notice. Then comes stage two, when all this 'camaraderie' and esprit bullshit just goes. Then

Hands of the Ripper (1971) isn't on anyone's list of favorite Hammer horrors, but the film is far better-produced and more ambitious than most of the company's films of the 1970s, and it's certainly unusual, some accurately describing it as Hammer's Marnie (1964), referencing the similarly-plotted Alfred Hitchcock flop now somewhat better regarded today.

Some of the advertising for Hands of the Ripper was highly misleading, suggesting star Eric Porter was portraying the infamous Jack the Ripper. In fact, he plays a Freud-influenced London doctor attempting to cure a psychologically scarred young woman who, as it happens, is the daughter of the Ripper, though neither realizes this for most of the film.

The problem with the picture is conceptual rather than executional, which is above average for Hammer during this rapidly ebbing period. The plot requires an intelligent, moral ...Read the entire review

Initially airing from March through April of 1995, "Chiller" is a long forgotten, six episode British horror anthology series. Unlike "Tales from the Crypt" or "Tales from the Darkside," "Chiller" is a very straight-faced exercise in short form, supernatural storytelling. Covering topics ranging from your standard ghost story to a sinister small-town secret, "Chiller" is very much a slow-burn series that at a surface glance, has the visual look of your standard British drama. While decidedly not campy in production design, "Chiller" proves to be only a mildly effective (and that's debatable) entry in the genre, ultimately finding itself hamstrung by its own low-key approach to entertai...Read the entire review

The Film:Somehow, and I'm not sure how, I managed to miss Basket Case 3: The Progeny. That in and of itself is bad enough. But that's not what is really bad. What is really bad is that I didn't even know there was a third film in director Frank Henenlotter's Basket Case series. I saw the first two films, and then this one slipped past me, unnoticed for more than twenty years. And that is just plain pathetic. Well, it may be more than two decades late, but at least I've finally seen the third go-round of the Bradley twins.

Picking up where Basket Case 2 left off, BC3 finds Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck) desperate to be rejoined with his deformed, murderous conjoined twin brother Belial. In BC2, Belial hooked up with the equally deformed freak Eve, for what could possibly be the most ridiculous sex scene in any horror movie. Well, in the aftermath of...Read the entire review

In an uncommon move for a film shot long before the era of home video and DVD (it may be the first ever making-of documentary of an independent feature), filmmaker Roy Frumkes was allowed onto the set and into the editing bay of George A. Romero's landmark zombie film Dawn of the Dead, to interview the cast and crew about making a follow-up to the hugely successful Night of the Living Dead, and to discuss Romero's directorial style. The completed 83 minute feature, Document of the Dead, was released in 1983 to positive reviews, just a couple of years before Romero's third Dead film was made. Now, encouraged by other filmmakers like Eli Roth and with plenty of help from Romero himself, Frumkes has recut Document with another 20 minutes of footage from the sets of subsequent projects, including Two Evil Eyes, Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead.Read the entire review

Perfect October viewing for those looking for some classic U.K. chills. Synapse Films has released The Complete Hammer House of Horror, a five-disc, thirteen-episode collection of the 1980 television horror anthology. Featuring famous Hammer alumni from both in front of and behind the cameras (including Hammer horror icon Peter Cushing and Denholm Elliott, and directors Alan Gibson and Peter Sasdy among others), The Complete Hammer House of Horror's scary, gory, sometimes naughty, sometimes British black humor-amusing episodes are necessary viewing for any fan of 80s horror or the famous studio's theatrical releases. A couple of brief bonuses don't hurt these good-looking, uncut transfers.

Made during a particularly bleak period for Hammer Films, Twins of Evil (1972) is a pleasant surprise. While still exhibiting the same desperate components of the company's other horror films of the period - gratuitous nudity, an obviously low budget, and feeble attempts to create a new franchise/horror star - its screenplay is much more intriguing than most early '70s Hammers, the direction is lively, and it features one of actor Peter Cushing's best performances.

Synapse Film's new Blu-ray will be the first time many will have had a chance to see it. Though previously available on DVD in the UK, this apparently marks its first home video appearance in America since a 1990 VHS release. The presentation is a major improvement over Synapse's flawed 2010 Blu-ray of another Hammer title, Vampire Circus (also 1972), and like that film it comes with a mountain of extra features. Included is...Read the entire review

When his remote-control lawnmower birthday gift accidentally slices and dices his spacey fiancee Elizabeth (Patty Mullen) at a birthday party, Jeffrey Franken (James Lorinz) is distraught. Unable to think straight without his better half (no matter how many times he scratches his brain with a power drill), he rigs up a garage full of equipment ready to harness the lightning provided by an impending storm, with the hopes of bringing her back from the dead. All he needs to complete the puzzle is a new body for his bride-to-be, so he throws on a cheap suit, borrows his mother's car, and begins cruising the city's seediest streets...

Frankenhooker sounds like a hole-in-one. A cheap monster movie with the promise of nudity, ridiculous splatter effects, and an over-the-top sense of humor? Sign me up. Sadly, director/writer Frank Henenlotter never really captures the promise of the movie's premise, s...Read the entire review

That's preeeeeeeetty much the plot summary for Red Scorpion right there too. Red Scorpion, filmed after that one-two punch of Rocky IV and Masters of the Universe, stars Dolph Lundgren as Soviet Spetsnaz soldier

Synapses Films' 42nd Street Forever DVD releases, which number a half dozen and counting, have become must-owns for film geeks. The collections, which the label began issuing in 2005, are a buffet of trailers from the so-called "grindhouse" era: the notorious, the long forgotten, and everything in between. Other, lesser labels have attempted to follow their lead with trailer compilations of their own, but no one does it quite as well as Synapse; their discs are howlingly entertaining and marvelously compiled, and feature about the best possible A/V quality for scraps of film as presumably neglected as these.

As part of its growing Asian Cult Cinema Collection line, Synapse Films has just released the tame (relative to its subgenre) 2005 J-Horror title Gurozuka directed by Yoichi Nishiyama. Anytime I review a foreign title without an English language dub (as Gurozuka's DVD is packaged), I feel obligated to start off by acknowledging that fact. Reading subtitles doesn't bother me, but I know many film enthusiasts who refuse to do so. If you fall into that camp, this first U.S. home video release of Gurozuka just is not f...Read the entire review

If you're just looking for a quick, eight-word review, I could probably get away with leaving it at this: Intruder totally lives up to its cover art.

Okay, you know how Joe Bob Briggs coined the phrase "Spam in a Cabin" to describe one of the most tried and true horror formulas of the 1980s? Y'know, a gaggle of horny twentysomethings trot off to some hopelessly out-of-the-way cabin to drink and screw, and with no chance of escape and no one to come to their rescue, they get slaughtered one by one? Anyway, Intruder sticks to that same basic story, only instead of Spam-in-a-cabin, it's more like Spam-in-a-supermarket. Wait, I need a better analogy. Anyway, Intruder is set at a floundering grocery store, and the night crew ha...Read the entire review
]]> South of HeavenDVD Videohttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=51692
Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:44:02 PDTRecommended

South of Heaven is a film that really threw me for a loop. It's visually arresting, well-performed, stylishly directed, and often bizarrely dispairing, summoning in the viewer the same sense of hopelessness that the characters are feeling. It's a wonderful, incredibly original piece of filmmaking that never does what the viewer expects, all with the effect of making the viewer feel like shit.

The plot revolves around two brothers, named Roy Coop (Adam Nee) and Dale Coop (Aaron Nee). When the movie begins, we're with Roy, who strides into his brother's curiously empty apartment, fresh off a stint in the Navy. His brother has been sending him a novel in letter form over the course of his tour of duty, and now that Roy is back, he's going to shape it into the Gre...Read the entire review

"What began as a birthday barbeque ended in a bizarre tragedy in Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey today. It was this power mower that brought a quick end to the life of 21 year old bride-to-be Elizabeth Shelley. Like wood through a mulcher, the

Writer/director James Glickenhaus shrugs off comparisons to Death Wish in his audio commentary, and...well, yeah, he's right. Sure, The Exterminator is also an urban revenge flick about a seemingly ordinary schlub who dishes

This is just a guess, but I'm betting a lot of film students turning in their thesis projects have hammered out something artsy, abstract, pretentious, and...well, terrifyingly like this:

Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter, meanwhile, handed a professor at UCLA a slasher flick. Not some post-modern deconstruction, not some high-concept spin on the old formula...just a gritty, grimy, brutal, straightahead slasher. Obrow and Carpenter wanted to use their movie as foot in the door in Hollywood, so instead of trying to do something offbeat or unusual, they did pretty much the exact same thing that all the slasher flicks from the class of 1980 were doing -- it's just that they did it better. So many of...Read the entire review
]]> The Image (Blu-ray)Blu-rayhttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=48698
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 05:07:13 PDTRecommended

At one point in The Image, a middle-aged woman, wealthy and bored, is in a room in her palatial home that she's nicknamed "The Gothic Chamber". As she

The beginning of VampireCircus introduces audiences to avampire known as Count Mitterhaus (Robert Tayman), who seems to beluring many youngwomen into nights of seduction and eventually death. The opening(pre-credits)lasts a staggering amount of time with nearly fifteen minutes devotedto thesetup involving this vampire and how he seduces a woman and has herhelp him tokill a very young girl. The act of killing a child almost seems toserve assome kind of perverse ...Read the entire review
]]>
ResonnancesDVD Videohttp://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46099
Sun, 20 Mar 2011 11:28:35 PDTRecommended

REVIEWWriter/director Philippe Robert has caused quite a genre buzz with his French language horror flick Resonnances, a shockingly meager-budgeted feature length debut that is chock-full of natural dialogue and fun monster sequences. The geek chatter comparison to the vibe of Raimi's Evil Dead series may be somewhat overstating this film's hipness, but I'm here to tell you that I haven't enjoyed a "big monster" adventure like this in quite some time. And that's even with the fact that the creature doesn't make even make its initial onscreen appearance until about 62 minutes in of the film's 83 minute runtime.

The setup is remarkably spartan, with Robert relying on the simple premise of plopping a few characters into danger as potential monster food, and then waiting to see who gets munched on and who survives. This time it's a sextet of twentysomethings - three male, th...Read the entire review

Vampire Circus (1972) is the first Hammer horror film released to Blu-ray anywhere in the world.* It speaks well of Synapse Films, a boutique label dedicated to cult films like this, that they would scoop bigger labels with more exploitable Hammer titles, and with a fine high-def presentation and scads of good extras to boot. And yet it's, well - odd. Though it has many of the earmarks of the kind of horror films Britain and the European continent were churning out during the early-1970s, Vampire Circus is hardly the typical Hammer horror film.

At the time, the company was in a state of near-insolvency, Hammer having lost its long-term Hollywood studio backing, and Vampire Circus reflects their desperation to find the Next Big Thing while keeping new films - something, anything - in production. It avoids the been-there/done-that air of Hammer's Dracula series with Christo...Read the entire review

The Film:Back in the early days of home video, when studios were much slower to release new movies, and video tapes were usually rented at grocery stores, there was a glut of exploitation titles to choose from. These were all flicks that had come out in decades earlier, and many of them were released on video under alternate titles. This is especially true of select blaxploitation titles--movies like The Bus is Coming became Ghetto Revenge, while Force Four, Charcoal Black, Brother on the Run and Savage became Black Force, Black Rage, Black Force 2 and Black Valor, respectively. And then there was Death of a Snowman, one of the few blaxploitation films to boast of being an international production, which found a home on select video shelves under the titles Black Trash and Soul Patrol.

Graphic Sexual Horror -- now there's a title that screams for attention. Upon closer inspection, hesitant viewers will discover it's actually a documentary rather than the next step in Hostel knock-offs. Chronicling the rise and fall of an extreme adult website known as InSex, directors Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon interview the site's creator, Brent "pd" Scott, several of the models, and a few of the site's fans to try and paint a picture of this mishmash of sex, commerce, and an attempt, at least, at artistic expression.

The primary focus of the film is Scott, who comes off as a fairly intelligent guy, but it's hard to tell if he's doing the documentary to honestly reflect on his experiences creating and running InSex or to "clear his name", as it were, in the public eye. He's perfectly willing to admit that some things went to his head, and occasionally that he crossed the line, b...Read the entire review

The Movie:Night of Death is a surprisingly fun French horror film from the early eighties that delves deep into what this reviewer believes is a deep well of relatively untapped material: creepy old people.

Martine, played by Isabelle Goguey, is a pretty young nurse who takes a job with a private nursing home. She shows up for the job a day early, having just had a fight with her boyfriend. This causes some consternation for Helene (Betty Beckers), the director of the nursing home, because the old nurse Nicole has not left yet, and Helene (along with the residents of the nursing home and the handyman Flavien) was planning on killing Nicole and eating her corpse. This last revelation may seem like a spoiler, except that Nicole is killed and eaten very early on in the film. The tension comes from the audience knowing that the same thing is being planned for Martine in one month's time...Read the entire review